AMERICAN POLICY

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 303, 20 September 1939, Page 9

AMERICAN POLICY

Party Heads To Confer

With President

'(Received September 19, 8.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, Sept. 18.

President Roosevelt has invited Messrs. A. M. Landon and Franklin Knox, the titular heads of the Republican Party, to participate in a conference of the nation’s leaders at the White House on Wednesday to consider America’s neutrality programme.

Mr. Knox, who was Mr. Landon’s running mate in the Presidential campaign of 1936, said that Mr. Roosevelt would achieve “remarkable statesmanship if he included the leaders of the opposing parties in his Cabinet.”

It is understood that the conference is designed not only to enlist the support of both parties for the neutrality proposals, but to determine strategy and keep the isolationist voices at a low pitch in order to avoid the belief gaining currency abroad that the nation is widely divided over Mr. Roosevelt’s foreign policy. Senator Borah said that apparently the increasing Russian-Japanese friendship might change the Administration’s desire for a cash-and-carry policy and lead President Roosevelt to seek a return to international law, entailing the abandonment of all the neutrality legislation. This, Senator Borah said, he would prefer to some things which might be offered. Mr. W. Green, president of the Federation of Labour, said the federation would be active at the special session of Congress to urge strict neutrality and the prevention of war profiteering. American railroad companies will spend 200,000,000 dollars during the next six months on new equipment and repairs to “meet any emergency in transport demands.”

The American “Law Journal,” in an editorial, says the United States neutrality law conflicts with the international neutrality law as it was previously understood and applied. It adds that the United States while a noncombatant in the last war refused, despite a German protest, to depart from neutrality as it was previously understood in international law. The journal quotes the first volume of Kent’s commentaries, 1826, in which it is held to be shown that neutrals may lawfully sell or carry to belligerents contraband, subject to the right of seizure in transit.

The fact that there is only one German ship taking refuge in the United States, compared with 83 when the United States declared war in 1917, is interpreted in Washington as an indication that Germany fears that the United States will enter the present war.

Sam Carp, who claims to be a bro-ther-in-law of the Soviet Premier, M. Molotov, testified before the Dies Committee, which is investigating unAmerican activities, that the Soviet commissioned him in 1936 to purchase 100.000,000 dollars' worth of battleships and other equipment here. When the negotiations for the battleships failed Russia sent a second commission in

February, 1939, to negotiate for the construction of destroyers, the plans for which were still in the hands of the State Department, awaiting authorization. The vessels were to be without guns, which were to be mount ed in Russia.

Mr. Morganthau, United States Secretary to the Treasury, has announced that the variation between the New York rate and the official rate for sterling is such that the Treasury is not risking one dollar on foreign exchange transactions. It had a very unsettling effect on United States importers and exporters, and the British and American Governments were in communication about it, he said.—By Radio,